After setting up a successful website and publishing great content you want your personal brand to be seen by influencers in your market. What you may not realize is there are a lot of spam accounts set up to clog servers and steal your hard-earned status. Now is the time to do an audit and find out which referrals are fake and which ones are the real deal.
Is Your Brand’s Website Receiving a Ton of Referrals?
While Google Analytics has a great framework to measure and track clicks and visitors it can become skewed with false information. With security measures in place it is possible to remedy spam referrals and gather more accurate information. Taking the time to do this will produce better results on the search engines, which means greater visibility for your brand.
Your personal brand might be surprised after checking your Google Analytics account at the amount of fake or spam accounts. Many of these are out to generate leads for their affiliate links, which can slow down your server and website loading time. There are several steps you can take to identify these bad bots:
- Look for repeat offenders – After taking a look at your website analytics your brand may find that there is a pattern of usual suspects who are appearing in your referrals lists. Many of these websites will appear like spam or affiliates, and do not offer a tangible business or content.
- Determine whether your website host is vulnerable – Hosting companies that offer services at a cut rate may be more vulnerable to spam referrals. This is common with shared hosting companies, and websites that have a custom CMS/shopping cart. If you do engage in affiliate marketing take another look at who you are doing business with as some of these may not be as scrupulous as others.
- Hire a web developer – After taking a look at Google Analytics you may need the help of a developer to help you block the spam referrals and change settings on your server. This is well worth the expense in order to save your search engine ranking, and attract authentic visitors to your brand’s website. We do this for our clients.
In order to optimize your personal brand’s visibility online it’s important to check your analytics at least once a month to determine where your traffic and referrals are coming from. Spam or bad bots can not only affect your server, but some can even steal email addresses, create fake accounts, and even get past our CAPTCHA codes. Once a thorough cleanup has taken place you will start to see better results and higher search engine rankings.
